As Andy Robinson walks into the lobby of the tranquil Bath Spa Hotel a pneumatic drill starts up. It is the story of his life; no England rugby coach has had to endure so many distractions or discordant noises off. In a perfect world England would be training for the autumn internationals in monastic peace. In reality he can hardly hear himself think as Twickenham's unholy war with the leading clubs rages.

There must be times when Robinson feels like curling into a ball and giving vent to his own primal scream. Most neutrals glaze over on the subject of the Rugby Football Union's stance on player release days but friend and foe alike will be monitoring intently England's games against Australia, New Zealand and Samoa. If the world champions lose to the weakened Wallabies on Saturday week, no one will defend the team management and heap all the blame instead on faceless RFU committee men. Robinson is caught between a ruck and a hard place; if results fail to improve he might as well move to a desert island and add Crusoe to his name.

It is just as well, then, that Robinson still exudes excitement before today's announcement of his 22-man squad for the Australia game. Whatever detractors think of his all-round suitability for the top job, he is the ultimate enthusiast and instinctive patriot. Even Sir Clive Woodward never hugged himself with such pre-match glee. "I've always loved the international game, it's a magnificent thing to be involved in," he says, eyes gleaming.

Equally unshakeable is his faith in his own coaching ability. The other day, a shade naively, even Robinson admitted that, as a fan, he would be calling for managerial changes if England lost all three autumn Tests. Last week his old Bath mate Stuart Barnes weighed in, "confused" by Robinson's decision to drop three fit squad members less than a month after naming his elite 30.

"If people had a little more depth and knew what we were actually doing it wouldn't be confusing," Robinson retorts. "Barnesy will always criticise me whatever I've done. I've no issue with him doing that, only other directors of rugby. Why? Because he's paid for it."

Even so, Robinson is not thick-skinned enough to be unaware that England must reinvent themselves urgently. Ask for one word to describe his first year in sole charge and the best he can do is "mixed". What else could he claim after four wins and four defeats, the Lions debacle in which he was implicated, and the flak arising from the botched treatment of Henry Paul and Mathew Tait?

A job which, post-Woodward, was always going to be problematic has now become a race against time.

The 41-year-old former maths teacher is forever stressing it is a team game but, if he wishes to continue as front man, it is now or never. "I do believe there are shelf-lives for coaches. It is a tremendous sacrifice for your family, a massive sacrifice for everyone close to you."

How much longer, in that case, will he stick it? "Who knows? Who knows how long I have left as an international coach. I've already had five great years. Over that time there have always been people criticising England, even when we were winning. It's part of the England job that you're going to get criticised. What I've got to do is stay true to myself, the coaching team and the players."

The unspoken implication is that, whatever happens, he knows he will not be around for a World Cup beyond France in 2007. There is no point, then, in lying idly back and letting nature take its course. Next week, in a break with normal procedures, England's players will do nothing but rest on Wednesday and Thursday to ensure they are absolutely raring to go against the Wallabies. Robinson, a vegetarian who takes his coffee black, wants a clear-eyed England to up the pace and go for broke.

"I'm a passionate England supporter and the people we want taking the pitch are players who go out and earn a victory, not just expect it to happen. That's what we're putting together: a team with a real competitive edge capable of making decisions on the pitch, who don't just stand there saying 'What does the coach want?' People can write what they want about the past year. I'm not saying there's not a lot of work to be done. But we mustn't allow the expectation to limit us and make us go into our shells." He talks of "a core of players" who would grace any Test team: Martin Corry, Danny Grewcock, Andy Sheridan, Charlie Hodgson, Josh Lewsey, Mark Cueto. For a second or two it is almost as if everything in the Twickenham garden is, well, rosy.

But Robinson remains up to his neck in the same political mire which persuaded Woodward to walk away. His players are being advised not to trust anything the RFU tells them and one of his chief confidants, Brian Ashton, this week defected back to Bath from the national academy. It could get messier still, with no England training days arranged beyond this month.

But Robinson is unrepentant about his need for more preparation time. "Whether it's me coaching, or someone else, we need a plan that's going to work for English rugby. The issue is about elite performance ... if I left the England job and became a club coach again, I'd be willing to hand over my international players the weekend before a Test because I know it's the right preparation."

He is similarly bullish about the Lions tour. "Are you saying that if we'd changed the two coaching teams around the result would have been different?" he snorts. "Graham Henry, Steve Hansen and Wayne Smith are very good coaches but they had a team who had grown together. It didn't shake my faith in myself as a coach at all. I wouldn't want to come across as arrogant; I'm not arrogant in any shape or form and I'll always look at myself. [But] it's had no lingering effect. All I've done is looked at myself and thought, 'How can I be better?' Too often people prefer to criticise others as opposed to looking at themselves. We just got beaten by a better team who played very well against a side who didn't really gel."

Unswervingly honest he may be but Robinson lives in an age when people want their national coaches, in the current vernacular, to tick every box. If Woodward and Jose Mourinho are cut from much the same extrovert cloth, Robinson, whose coaching heroes are decent men of the north like Ashton, Ian McGeechan and Jack Rowell, has hitherto been regarded as more of a Steve McClaren type.

Now is the time to shake people's assumptions as vigorously as Middlesbrough did with a round ball at the Riverside last Saturday.